A blog on issues affecting Australia's newsagents, media and small business generally. More ...

Month: October 2007

OH&S claim for newspaper delivery driver

I’ve heard that a newsagent is facing a workplace claim for shoulder injury from a newspaper delivery. driver. The newsagency is located in a state where overweight newspapers is a known problem. If the threatened claim eventuates I’d expect to see the matter quickly escalate to include an industry wide review of practices.

The challenge with this issue is accountability. While the proposed case I heard of would be against the newsagent as the employer, I’d expect the publisher to be involved somehow since they create the fat newspapers and know of the OH&S challenges these create.

Publishers make money from the advertising which drives the weight. Newsagents are on a fixed income no matter what size the paper and this is where inequity in the current arrangements start.

While the case may settle before going any further, there will be others. This is a hot issue among newsagents and people who work for newsagents.

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Newsagency challenges

Rove hot

Rove McManus is hot in the eyes of magazine editors with four covers this week. Judging by sales from several newsagencies I have seen I’d say the editors are right. Woman’s Day is doing especially well.

rove.JPG

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magazines

Time to review newspaper supply arrangements

With newsagents selling their newspaper home delivery businesses in unprecedented numbers, publishers and other stakeholders ought to review how they view and engage with the retail newsagent.

A common situation I see is that when a newsagent sells their home delivery round to concentrate on retail, they drop to being a second class citizen in the eyes of the publishers. This does not happen every time but I have seen it enough to record it as a problem. (I note that this has not been my experience – I am commenting of what others have told me.)

I’d like to see the retail newsagent have a robust direct publisher relationship. This is essential is maximum sales are to be achieved. Too often I have seen inadequate support to the retail newsagent for promotions such as DVDs, posters and the like. A direct relationship could avoid this and actually help the newsagent achieve higher sales.

Publishers invest heavily in subsidising home delivery subscriptions. Equal effort spent on the retail network could reap excellent sales growth. Just because I sold my home delivery round a year ago does not mean I care less about newspapers. In fact, the contrary is true – I see the importance of newspapers from a pure retail perspective. This focus is good for the publishers – if they wish to engage more deeply with retail only newsagents.

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Newsagency challenges

E Ink evolving

Engadget reports on some E Ink developments which were shown off at a trade show a couple of days ago. Some say E Ink could replace print newspapers. The challenges are battery power, portability and durability. Various publishers are investing in this and related technologies.

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Media disruption

Good Food Guide goes mobile

The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald have each opened free mobile phone access to their highly successful Good Food Guide listings. Given how the Guide is used by diners, I’d expect the mobile service to attract many users.

How does this affect newsagents? Every newspaper connected franchise which moves to online distribution channels is a challenge for newsagents – I hope they (we) are taking notice.

On a technical note, the team at Fairfax may want to make sure that links on The Age page reflect that. The FAQs talk only of the SMH.

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Newspaper marketing

Will newspapers survive?

Jeff Jacoby writing at The Boston Globe over the weekend writes about this. It’s a thoughtful piece – in a newspaper of all mediums. Howard Owens and others have some interesting observations on the same topic at his blog.

Discussion of the future of newspapers is important yet pretty much neglected here in Australia. Either we’re in denial or the challenges playing out overseas will pass us by.

Given the importance of newspapers to newsagents, it is vital we engage in the conversation about the future of the product in its current form. Such engagement will, hopefully, guide our commercial considerations about our own future. Our retail and distribution businesses were, after all, created by publishers to serve their needs.

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Media disruption

Cheap stationery from China

At a Hong Kong trade fair yesterday I saw stationery from many China based factories. Some items were familiar to me – they are sold in Australia under a house brand. Given the prices offered, I was left wondering why newsagent house brands can’t be more effective than they are. Surely those newsagents who want a house brand strategy can buy better, sell for less and make more than is achieved today.

Based on the prices of some items I saw in Hong Kong, current pricing for house brand stationery offered to newsagents in Australia could be off by between 25% and 50%.

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Stationery

Rewarding magazine browsers

Newsagents often complain about browsers who spend too long reading magazines and newspapers and leave without making a purchase. We are about to experiment with a browsers bonus using a coupon which will hand to browsers and peak times in an effort to bounce them to another category and a purchase.

Our first offer is around greeting cards. Given that most magazine browsers in our newsagency to not buy a card we figures any sale is a bonus. We will test the coupon on Thursday and Friday evenings as well as on Saturday – our peak magazine browsing times.

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magazines

Foreign Christmas cards

xmas_foreign.JPGEven though our range is small, these foreign Christmas cards sell very well.

Our view is that if we want to be a destination for cards, we need to cater to all possible niches, including foreign language cards. We do sell foreign language newspapers after all so it makes sense.

What we have not mastered is how we can locate these cards near our foreign language newspapers to maximise the up-sell opportunity – not that we need to as they sell very well.

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Greeting Cards

Cultish reps need a cool down

I’ve been told about a rep who visited our Forest Hill store Friday who wanted us to carry some new magazine which is to be given away free. It will change your business forever, he said. It will change your customer’s lives, he said. I think we need to get a water pistol at the counter to cool down some of the cultish reps who claim they will change our lives. We should give then 15 seconds to leave otherwise we squirt them. They will soon learn. If I want my life changed I’ll go to Mecca, Vatican City, Lourdes or Lumbini.

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supplier arogance

The Standard sets a standard

the_standard.JPGThe Standard free newspaper in Hong Kong is different to the free daily newspapers I have seen elsewhere. A free newspaper like this would impact sales of paid-for newspapers is released in Australia. It has everything from serious news – a page one story on the exchange rate – through to good sports coverage – a back page story about the loss suffered by Shane Warne’s All Stars here yesterday to Sri Lanka in the Hong Kong Sixes.

While we have geographic challenges in Australia and lack the capital city population mass of, say, Hong Kong, I am sure that the free model is something Australian newspaper publishers continue to watch with keen interest. Newsagents would do well to match that interest.

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Newspapers

Free daily newspapers in Hong Kong

The folks at The Standard have excellent distribution around Central if what I saw in Hong Kong this morning is anything to go by. Entrances and exits to railway stations are manned by happy teams. Take a look at the scene outside World Wide House at 7:30 this morning.

standard_free.JPG

I saw fewer people handing out the Headline Daily, a Chinese title.

Both papers are more traditional newspaper like than mX back in Australia. Headline Daily is 48 pages and even though in Chinese, I get the feel it is more than fashion and pop culture. The Standard, also 48 pages, is better than many newspapers I have purchased.

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Newspapers

Desk calendars in a newsagency

Further to my post this morning about desk calendars, in Hong Kong tonight I found exactly this range if the closest business you can find here to an Australian newsagency. They have an amazing display of these desk calendars and a minimal range of hanging calendars.

cal_kong.JPG

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Calendars

Desk calendars we could sell

diaries_na.JPG

This photo shows just three of the massive range of desk calendars we have received at our Sophie Randall cards and gifts store. (For view of more of the range click here.) Between ten a fifteen of the titles would work very well in newsagencies. We sell beading, knitting and similar titles so why not the specialist desk calendars which connect to the same demographic?

While newsagents have good coverage of hanging calendars, we tend to shy away from these desk products.

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Calendars

A lesson from Subway

Subway has a brilliant promotion at the moment – buy four Subway Fresh Fit meals between now and early December and for $50 more plus $10 postage you get a Repco bike. Subway has established itself as the healthy fast food and this promotion reinforces that. A bike for $50 in excellent value.

This campaign keeps Subway playing in a different ocean to the traditional fast food outlets. This is what newsagents, or at least each of the marketing groups, need to do – stand for something which separates from the pack and gives consumers a reason for active support.

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Uncategorized

Another stuck-on ad covering editorial

age_sat27.JPGWhile the folks at The Age have spared their masthead, they have allowed the National Australia Bank to pay to cover park of the photo on the front page of the Domain section of today’s newspaper.

Beyond my dislike of these stuck-on ads, they disrespect the creative team behind the newspaper and they frustrate customers. The folks at NAB will win themselves no friends from this ad today.

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newspaper masthead desecration

Lovatts sales rankings success

cross_oct26.JPGWe heard this week that newsXpress Forest Hill is ranked #7 nationally and #2 in Victoria for sales of Lovatts titles. The Lovatts brand dominates the crossword and puzzle space and we have made a concerted effort around this category for several years. That effort is paid off in these rankings – both are way above our overall state and national magazine sales rankings. I’d put our success down to obsession with the catgeory and smart use of technology – our in-store actions are data driven.

newsXpress stores accounted for seven of the top sixteen newsagency outlets for Lovatts product. Newspower had five, Nextra three and one was unaligned to a marketing group. I appreciate Lovatts tracking sales and reporting at the marketing group level – nothing like a bit of health competition.

I see crosswords as a crucial category for newsagents. Done well, they demonstrate a point of difference to a very loyal and cost effective consumer – they are a honey pot around which you can build other success. The key is to carry a broad range yet ensure that the magazine distributors do not load you with foreign titles which are dumped here and soak up too much real-estate.

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crosswords

Drinks fridge road block

drinks.JPGThis drinks fridge is in the middle of a wall of stationery in the newsagency we purchase two weeks ago.

The location, while convenient to the counter, is odd. It blocks a clean view of the stationery offer. It demonstrates the persuasive power of the supplier at the time. Too often in newsagencies I see a drinks fridge or some other item stuck in the middle of another category, impacting the flow of the business and confusing customers.

Some reps are push beasts and their aggressive efforts can lead newsagents away from their core offer.

Our drinks fridge is being removed next week.

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Newsagency challenges

Card company IT standards close

A call for greeting card category standards

While magazine publishers and distributors long ago reached agreement on category standards, greeting card companies continue to fail newsagents. The lack of standards makes store level reporting, within the greeting card category, challenging. In our software newsagents have exceptional reporting tools – return on floor space, return on shelf space, supplier comparisons, ROI – there are many angles from which newsagents can analyse data gathered by the system. It is impossible for newsagents to determine the best card supplier in their store. This denies them the opportunity to be business like.

Some newsagents are so frustrated by this experience that they are planning to place barcode stickers on cards before they are placed on the shelf.

Card manufacturers must act urgently and together to sort this out. Every month the current situation continues is another month newsagents are not able to have the best possible information available to build their business.
The IT standards necessary to manage this already exist.

This is what I wrote to greeting card companies in the Tower Systems newsagent supplier newsletter in October 2006. I was writing out of frustration – having worked with card companies for more than two years of the data project with little real progress to show for the effort.

While I initiated the project with the card companies first in 2004, getting the 15 or so publishers to agree is where the time has gone.

The Tower newsletter generated significant action and finally, based on meetings we had last week, we can see that standards between card companies are close to final agreement.

Newsagents are set to benefit significantly from this project and it won’t matter what software they run – when I first took this to the card companies I made it clear that we had to approach this the same way we approached the MPA standards in the magazine area. While the smaller software companies benefit from the pioneering work of others, the borader industry benefits and that is what really matters.

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Greeting Cards

Magazine triple packs

stamping_papercraft.JPGWhile I was involved in a magazine relay this morning I saw first-hand the frustration of a customer over triple packs. Which one am I supposed to buy – they all look the same. She was right, three versions of this title, all current. How am I supposed to find which one I want if they are sealed up? At least she didn’t rip open the pack like others had with other double and triple packs. I don’t know how they expect to sell these magazines, our customer said as she walked out frustrated.

I assume these triple packs continue to come because they sell. It surprises me because they are hard to cost effectively merchandise, they frustrate customers and they often have longer than usual on-sale periods.

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magazines

Greeting acquisition

paidContent reports that American Greetings (parent company of John Sands) is paying $45 million to acquire Webshots, a big photo sharing site. I can see good synergy between the two businesses. I’d expect more acquisitions by card companies as they pursue online opportunities.

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Greeting Cards

CityLink, Skybus and more added to eziPass

ep_logo.JPGeziPass, the new and free electronic voucher platform for newsagents got better overnight with then release of additional product. CityLink tollway passes, Skybus airport transfer tickets and Fishing Licences for Victorian and New South Wales have been added to the eziPass inventory. more products are on the way.

Newsagents can sell vouchers direct through the exclusive link in their Tower Systems point of sale software. A free stand alone version which any newsagent is welcome to use will be released in the next week.

Click here to access the eziPass sign up process.

We have created eziPass to provide newsagents with an easy to use platform through which phone recharge and other electronic voucher product can be sold. There is no long contract to sign and no complex hardware to install at your sales counter. Plus, on some products, margin is better.

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Newsagency challenges